


The World's Most Well Liked - and Loneliest - Ghost

by brejamison



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, No Smut, Valentines, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-16 14:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 17,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13637799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brejamison/pseuds/brejamison
Summary: As a kid Danny had seldom been alone. Sam or Tucker had always been with him, and eventually Jazz and Valerie had joined them as well. In the years since, however, their lives continued on and, for whatever reason they deemed justifiable, they had packed up and left Amity Park - and him - behind. The Mansons had moved somewhere with "a little more culture", the Foleys had been force to relocate for Mr. Foley's job, and Jazz had gone off to college. Even Danny's parents had left Fenton Works after getting an irresistible proposition from the Guys in White.Solitude wasn't what he had wanted, but it was the life he had been forced into, finding himself completely and entirely unable to leave Amity Park.//After Danny and Fenton Works are abandoned, he's left behind to haunt his childhood home since his ghostly obsession - and the portal - won't let him leave. Loneliness doesn't look good on him but, luckily, a few new and old friends drop by every so often to keep him company.Where I post my one-shots from my RP blog the-half-ghost-kid-hero-rp, most featuring Tazaki-theRedKnight-blog's character Tazaki Hikari. Open for prompts and requests.





	1. "It looks a lot worse than it is."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "It looks a lot worse than it is."  
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari, Asha Toomes  
> Summary: After Danny's situation of being unable to leave his portal for too long is solved, he, Tazaki, and her sometimes hunting partner Asha travel from natural portal to portal, killing the monsters that come through and closing the portals for good.

Danny didn’t even notice he was hit at first. He was too busy running, ducking, and shooting energy blasts at their attacker. He followed Tazaki and Asha around a corner, the red haired huntress returning fire to cover him.

Asha  _beep booped_  something on his device and yelled at the other two loudly: “It’s almost ready!” 

“Almost’s not good enough!” Danny barked. 

Taz squatted and replaced the clip in her rifle. “How many are left?” Danny raised his arm over her head and fired into the distance, dissuading the creatures from advancing on them and leaving the circle. 

More sounds came from Asha’s machine and he pointed ahead, then left. “I see–” he cursed loudly and slapped the device, “seventy-two life signs!”

Taz stood and slammed her back against the red brick wall. It scraped against her shirt. Aiming, she closed one eye and fired. 

A creature wailed in the distance. 

Danny frowned at her, sweaty forehead wrinkled. Only very special - very rare - bullets could wound these creatures. “How many left is that?”

She met his concerned glare with a nod, cocking the weapon. “Enough.”

Suddenly, a secondary device strapped to Danny’s hip, one on Tazaki’s wrist, and another in Asha’s cargo pocket beeped loudly. Danny and Taz switched places, him checking his small machine as she and Asha fired around the corner. More angry snarls came from the town square, sloppy liquid splashing to the cobblestone.

The screen lit up green, a countdown complete. “It’s time! It’s ready!” the ghost boy informed. Then he blinked, suddenly knocked off balance by some invisible force. It was probably all the excitement. He wasn’t used to such a large scale battle and the last few days had been mind-numbingly stressful. The three of them, in an unfamiliar town, speaking a language they didn’t speak, had been going nonstop to assemble a trap that usually took weeks. 

And it was all falling apart. 

“We’re not ready!” Taz huffed. Another squeeze of the trigger and another other-worldly wail squelched through the air. 

“I know!” Danny replied, gulping. The world righted itself and he shook himself free of his stupor. Now was not the time to flake out. He had to think. For once the trap was up and operational ahead of schedule. 

Asha tapped his shoulder and Danny moved on instinct, replacing the large man’s spot against the wall and firing wildly into the horde. Asha tapped on his device, swiped, did some math, then typed again. 

“Fastest route to the west corner?” 

“3rd street, left, right, forty-nine meters, left,” Taz replied automatically. The west corner was her stake out point. She was tasked with knowing how to get there no matter where they were in the city. 

Asha nodded. “Southeast corner: Tille Road, right, fifty meters, left, thirty-eight meters, Skille Rd,” he recited. 

That left one corner uncovered. 

“Phantom–!” he began.

“No!” Taz interrupted sternly, but Danny knew what was coming and clipped his device to his belt in preparation. 

Asha stared at him with golden eyes. “Northeast corner.”

“Right, Town Square, one hundred two meters.”

Taz glared daggers at both of them. “You can’t! That’s a hundred unprotected meters of those things! Go around!” 

Danny closed his eyes, breathing deep. “Right. Town Square. One hundred two meters.” 

Asha stood, reloading his weapon. “There’s no time,” he replied quietly but leaving no room for argument. 

“Right. Town Square. One hundred two meters.” 

The red huntress’s forest green eyes narrowed but she nodded. “We’ll cover you. Go.”

Danny strode forward, one step, two, and kicked off into the air lightning fast. 

“Cover him!” Asha shouted. He and Tazaki raised their guns, stepping out of the shadows. Special and normal bullets alike rained horizontally through the air like a sideways storm.

The horde of writhing beasts screamed indignantly at the assault. Tentacles and limbs waved in the air uncontrollably, claws tearing at the clouds. 

Taz held her breath. 

* * *

The trap went off without a hitch. The monsters were banished forever back into the hole they came. The town was saved, the grateful citizens emerging from their hidden bunkers in amazement. 

No one had heard from the ghost boy. 

Taz raced off silently, Asha quick on her heels. Tired legs carried her the longest one hundred two meters she had ever run. Together, they rounded on the northeast corner, panting and scared. 

Danny was laying peacefully on his back, half propped up against a brick wall. He left a long stain that matched the brick in his wake. Green and red oozed from his side, his breaths hitched. One eye winced open and he grinned lopsidedly. It was pained but full of life. 

“It looks a lot worse than it is.” 


	2. "How did you get that?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "How did you get that?"   
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari

Danny didn’t even look up from the metal toolbox he was shoveling supplies into. Dirty gauze - he’d have to do something with that later - folded under mostly empty boxes of bandages. He’d have to replace those later too. His stockpile was running empty.

“It’s nothing,” he shrugged, glancing briefly to his side. “I’ve had worse.” 

She was leaning against his doorway. He didn’t have to look at her to see the expression on her face. Disapproval, study…. worry. 

It didn’t bother him that she had suddenly appeared in his room. She had been doing it quite a lot lately. So he’d have to fix the modified Ghost Portal too now, great. And it didn’t bother him that she was seeing him half-naked, his stupidly loose pajama pants twisted around his folded legs. It probably should’ve, but it didn’t. 

He didn’t wonder why that was. 

Empty bandage wraps were shoveled into the first aid tin, ripped strips of paper floating out of reach. He watched them fall with interest, wondering if he would land as delicately and softly as they had. 

“You’re being held together by athlete’s tape and staples,” Taz informed, as if he didn’t already know. He had put them there himself after all. “I can see your ribs.” 

He realized almost too late that he was leaning to one side, following the curved descent of the wrappers. With a huff and jerk, he managed to catch himself from toppling head first off his bed. He righted his precarious pose, planting both feet firmly on the carpet, and hoped the staples hadn’t come undone. His hands were too slick with dried green and red ooze to handle Jazz’s tiny purple stapler again. 

He’d have to clean his sheets if he was going to bleed out on them again. Just put it on the to-do list. Bandages, wrappers, gauze….

“I told you. I’ve had worse.” He ignored the way his words slurred together, knowing that if he did, she would too. Sleep now, lecture later. But his limbs refused to move. His body refused to lay down. 

“How much worse?” 

He studied the places the paint had chipped off his home made first aid kit. Well, in the beginning, he once used his powers so much he had put himself in a coma for a few days. Then there was the time he almost froze to death from the inside out. Actually, he wondered if that counted as a death? If that counted then did his ghost powers being shorted out count as another one? 

The toolbox slid off the bed and clattered noisily to the floor. He didn’t have the energy to jump at the noise. 

If those counted, then every time he passed out and transformed back counted right, too? 

“Too, right,” he slurred. “Those counted  _too, right_.” 

Not a lot of bandages left. 

He was so tired. 

On the floor, the dirty gauze lay over the bandage wrappers and if that wasn’t a perfect metaphor for his life he didn’t know what was. 

He’d really have to do something about that later. 

“Later. Always later.” This time he couldn’t tell if that was his voice or hers. “There won’t be a later if you don’t take care of yourself now.” 

Definitely hers. 

“No, no, not today.” He dragged his eyes across the blurry landscape of his room to stare at her, still lounging in the doorway. Always in the doorway, as if she was scared to come in. “Thought I told you: sleep now. Lecture later. Come at me again when I can properly defend myself.” But she wouldn’t. She was never here when he was awake.

“You have a concussion.” 

“I’m tired.”

“You’re going to bleed out.”

He smirked lopsidedly, aiming a pair of finger guns at her. He wasn’t entirely sure what that reaction was supposed to mean, but it felt right. A little sass to spice up the flavor soup.

“Alphabet soup,” he muttered, dropping his head into his palm and blushing as his own stupidity. “Flavor soup isn’t a soup. It’s just some words. Yummy words.” 

It didn’t bother him that the multiplying copies of her were seeing him lose his mind. It should have, but it didn’t. Nothing really bothered him anymore anyway. What was the point, being bothered by something? It wouldn’t change anything; just give the voices in his head more soup for lectures. 

“…”

Suddenly he was on his back, legs hanging off his bed. He could still feel the carpet under his toes. The words in his head didn’t make sense anymore, but that didn’t bother him anymore. 

It probably should have. 

“I’m tired. I’m going to bed,” he instructed. He wasn’t sure which voice he was trying to convince, but felt satisfied when he knew the red huntress was gone. He could feel it, just like the tightness of the brace on his wrist or the throbbing of his twisted ankle. He should elevate it so it didn’t fill too much.

“Swell.” 

And if that wasn’t a perfect metaphor for his life, he didn’t know what was. 

* * *

He must have passed out a some point. The only reason he knew he was waking up was because the sunlight was in his room; his dreams were always dark. 

He was bleeding out, he could tell. In that way old people hurt when the rain was near, or how dogs could smell storms. It was a detached sense that something was very wrong. He felt his body from a distance, and it felt like a stuffed animal minus the stuffing, being held together with athlete’s tape and staples. 

He had to call her. He was delirious, sure, and the pain in his side and chest and core was making him want to vomit, but he didn’t want his last thoughts to be a mental image of Jazz’s mutilated stuffed Einstein.

He was at least better than that. 

_“This is Red Knight. This better be important.”_

She sounded busy, he should hang up. 

 _“Hello? Hello, can you hear me?”_  

Now was definitely not a good time. He would have to call back later. 

 _“Are you there? Do you need something?”_  

Always later. Always needing, always later.

“Taz. Come get me. Need more bandages.” 

There still wasn’t any sunlight in his dream, but this time there was a little soft blue moonlight. And if that wasn’t a perfect metaphor for his life, he didn’t know what was. 


	3. Hug my muse and don't let go... no matter how much they squirm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "...hug my muse and don't let go… no matter how much they squirm"  
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari, Blaine - the prodigy surgeon

Danny had been trying to be better lately. He really had. For some reason, his human side had been pulling at him more than ever over the last few weeks. So he had listened. He had barely even switched forms at all. And slowly, ever so slowly, his mind had cleared. It was like a fog was lifted, allowing him to see clearly for the first time in what felt like forever.

Exhaustion was the first thing that had come for him. And it had done so in spades. What little energy he had had in the beginning was spent shifting from his bed to the couch and promptly falling into a restful sleep. After a few days, however, the tiredness in his bones started to ebb, his energy returning little by little.

What little vigor he had gathered, he had spent on cleaning. He could only manage menial tasks at first - straightening his first aid box, collecting dirty bandage wrappers, and taking out the trash - but by the third day he had graduated to vacuuming the living room and cracking the blinds in his room. It was nice, to feel the sun warm his cool skin. If allowed, he would curl up in a sunbeam and never leave. 

It had taken a day or so for his appetite to return in full, and he had been forced to confront his empty kitchen. Preparing a frozen meal wasn’t anything he couldn’t handle, but his stomach had quickly yearned for more sustaining sustenance after the first few repeat dinners. He had even been keeping up with his dirty dishes, never leaving so much as a spoon behind before turning in for the evening. 

After about a week, he had been starting to get into a rhythm. Wake, occupy himself by cleaning, organizing, or reading, then eating a healthy meal before heading to bed with a feeling of accomplishment warming his core. It had been nice, and he had been trying. He had been trying so hard. 

Of course, most things couldn’t last. Routines simply weren’t allowed to someone not belonging to this - or any other - dimension. Just when he was beginning to get his footing in this dance of normality, he was brutally reminded that the closest he could get was a pale mockery. 

* * *

His punishment had started right after a satisfying meal of mac n cheese and hot dogs. His favorite since childhood. A staple in American homes among American children. Something normal, concrete, and unchanging. And in a matter of minutes he was hunched over the upstairs toilet, retching undigested bits of noodles and uncultured meat into the recently cleaned bowl.

He didn’t clean the kitchen that night. 

The next morning he woke unusually late and everything hurt. Sore abs were run of the mill after blowing chunks; he knew that. It was standard and something he was intimately familiar with. This, though, was a full body, bone deep ache he wasn’t used to. It hung over him all day, a heavy blanket draped across his sagging shoulders. 

The few chores he could accomplish before tiring out were done slowly and with half-effort. 

Days passed and his condition had only gotten worse. It was as if all of the progress he had made was for nothing. The kitchen was ripe with spoiled mac n cheese, trash cans were overrun with crumpled tissues, and his blinds were drawn tight. Worst of all, his restored energy had been so depleted he would have guessed he was in the negative percentile. At least he would have if he had been in the right mind to speculate. 

The pain, like his insatiable exhaustion, stayed coiled tightly around him, its burning tendrils wrapped around his body. Even in most his relaxed state, the soreness in his limbs kept him from getting restful sleep. His short supply of energy was spent tossing and turning, which only tired him more. Constant stomach cramps and dry heaving ravaged the muscles that weren’t already in agony.

He was miserable and completely bewildered as to why. 

* * *

It had been four days of this torture. Four days spent wearing a path between his bed and the couch and the toilet. Four days since he had managed to keep anything down, liquid or otherwise. Four days without an hour of decent sleep. Four days without being able to touch his ghost side or powers. They were locked away, out of his reach somewhere deep and dark and untouchable.

As he sat on the couch blearily contemplating his dilemma and wondering if he was ever going to get peace, a knock rapped on the front door. It was dark outside, well into the hours of the evening, so he knew the guests were from out of town; no one in Amity Park would dare bother the abandoned Fenton Works building on the corner. 

Then there it was again, a pounding on his front door, more persistent this time. 

He should check that. 

He blinked slowly and suddenly found he was on his back, snuggled under a blanket, staring up at the vaulted ceiling of his living room. There were noises around him - heartbeats and words and movement. Time had passed, he could tell. It was later in the evening and for the first time in forever, he actually felt slightly rested. He was almost a brand new person having gotten his first bit of actual sleep in days. 

Someone was in the kitchen, complaining of the mess - rude - and someone else was coming down the stairs. Danny frowned, tilting his head to glance upside down at the walkway. Since when were the inside lights on? 

An all too familiar woman was descending the steps, haloed in brilliant crimson. She looked like an angel. 

“I said, did you find anything!?” she yelled to someone other than him.  

A grumpy angel. 

Danny grinned quietly as he watched her turn toward the kitchen, her arms tense. Then he remembered the second voice and his grinned slipped into a suspicious frown. 

“NO!” his angel’s companion answered back in a distinctly female voice. That definitely wasn’t the hell hound Tazaki usually traveled with. “Nothing short of some really gross dirty dishes,” the intruder continued and the young woman stomped her way into the doorway. She looked and sounded ages younger than Taz, though Danny would wager she was still older than him. “Would help if you told me what I was supposed to be looking for.”

Snuggling deeper into his cocoon, he glared at her over the hem of his blanket. She was loud. And short. He didn’t like her.

“I told you. Peppermint, ginger, or lemon. Herbs,” Taz replied. Growling, she rubbed her eyes. “There has to be  _something_.” 

“Just some frozen bean burritos,” the younger woman replied, holding up a frostbitten dinner. Danny’s glare intensified. Those were  _his_ frozen bean burritos. 

Suddenly Taz’s green eyes were narrowed on him. 

“Do you have any herbs or anything?” 

He blinked at her. 

“ _Hello?_  Herbs? Spices? Did your mom keep anything in stock? Didn’t you say she was naturalistic sometimes?” 

“No.”

“ _No?_ ” Apparently that wasn’t the answer she wanted to hear, because she sighed deeply, fingers massaging her eyes. “Of course not. I really  _did not_  want to go shopping today.” 

Suddenly, Danny realized why she looked so angelic: instead of her usual torn jeans and leather jacket, she was dolled up in a black dress, a knee length skirt hugging her hips. Black fur was curled around her shoulders, intricate lace across her collarbones keeping it in place. Her red locks were pulled back into a high ponytail, bangs framing her face and the sparkling diamond earrings that dangled from her ears. 

He had to be hallucinating. 

Taz grumbled, swinging her weight to one hip. One hand she planted firmly on that hip as the other shielded her painted face. “I. Had.  _Plans_ tonight,” she sighed. 

“I’ll go upstairs,” Danny muttered automatically. Sitting up, he slipped off the couch and shuffled to the stairs. The couch blanket was coming with him. Just in case anyone wanted to know.

Distracted, Taz frowned down to the young woman still clutching the frozen burritos. “And would you put those away!” she shouted, startling the poor girl.

“Oh come on!” her companion argued loudly. “I’m hungry! And you know there’s not gonna be any real food at the party! There never are. So we might as well eat up while we can.” 

The red huntress loomed over her darkly, eye twitching and forehead vein throbbing. “I said: put those  _away_!” 

Danny’s wet sniff caught Taz’s attention as the younger woman ran sobbing into the kitchen. “Danny?” she wondered softly. 

“‘m fine,” he slurred. A shoulder found its way to the wall and he figured that would be a nice place to rest his weight for the moment. “Jus’ tired.” 

* * *

Upstairs, Danny was flopped onto his bed, curled on his side under his couch blanket. The same tired feeling that had been dragging down his eyelids clawed at them even now, but rest alluded his weary soul. His brain was too busy muddling over just what had happened downstairs, his musings getting stuck on random images and sounds like a broken record player as he tried to make sense of the strange events. 

He could still hear the commotion coming from the kitchen, even in his room. That was something this old house had never been great with. The walls kept out ghosts, ghouls, and creeps, but his parents’ conversation about the newest anti-ghost disintegration weapon floated from room to room as if the walls weren’t even there. The muffled noise was a lullaby sweet with nostalgia and he slowly felt the tension leave his muscles. 

Just then, footsteps thumped softly down the hall, avoiding all the noisy spots with practiced ease. His door creaked open after a soft knock, white light from the hallway piercing the musty darkness of his room. 

“You okay?” 

What did she want him to say? That he had had a fever for what felt like a week now? That the last time he managed to keep down any sort of food or drink was four days ago? Or maybe that he couldn’t touch his ghost core and was scared to death he’d never be able to get it back? 

He shrugged. 

“Do you need anything?” she asked. Apparently the stylish heels had come off at some point, he realized as she padded flat footed across his room. 

He didn’t know what to say, so he kept still and silent. 

Taz noted this with a worried glare. He looked so small, lazily curled up in the middle of his bed. His frail figure was swallowed by the sweaty blankets surrounding him. The room smelled of illness and it made her queasy.

“When was the last time you cleaned up? Or cracked a window?” 

A frustrated growl told her everything she needed to know. 

“Four days ago.”

“And when was the last time you ate something?” 

His stomach rumbled loudly. “Four days ago,” he choked. 

“Showered?” 

“Four days ago.” 

“Fought–”

“Four. Days. Ago. Everything either did or didn’t happen four days ago, get it?” he interrupted, sitting up and glaring at her. Black hair stuck up in all directions, matted and unwashed. His sunken cheeks were flushed against his pale skin.

Taz gasped quietly. 

“Your eyes.” 

They were tired and weary and sad and shockingly blue. 

He turned away. 

“…I know.” 

“How long?” 

Honestly, she deserved that glare. 

“Four days ago,” the redhead concluded with a nod. She perched on the edge of the bed. Danny drew up his legs, wrapping his arms around them to give her space. Their hands accidentally brushed. 

The redhead blinked. 

“Your…”

“What?” he demanded shortly. This game of point out the obvious was getting real old real quick. 

“Your hand. You really are burning up.” Reaching forward suddenly, the redhead grabbed his hand and pulled it forward, clasping it between hers. “She said you were hot but not like this–”

Danny hissed and pulled away. 

“And you’re freezing,” he replied. They paused, staring at each other. 

He broke it with another grumpy huff. 

“So what? I’m a little warm. It happens,” he frowned, shrugging the blanket up over his arms, hiding them from her intrusive touch. 

Tazaki sighed, long and deep. The next time she spoke, her voice was soft and warm and he could have cried it reminded him so much of his mom. 

“Your body is unnaturally cold, right?” she asked. “On average around 85-90 degrees?”

He knew she knew the answer to that, so he debated for a long moment if he should even comment. 

“Yeah,” he admitted finally. Sitting up this long was making him a little queasy.

“Blaine took your temperature while you were unconscious downstairs. You’re currently 99.4 degrees. That’s high for normal people. She was surprised you were still alive.”

Danny stared blankly at her for awhile. Math was never his strong suit, but he didn’t remember it ever making him nauseous. 

“Bucket,” he gagged suddenly, throwing off the blanket. His small trash can was in his hands before his feet even touched the floor and he nestled it between his knees. 

“Danny,” Taz mourned quietly, rubbing his sweaty back with her black fingernails. Dry heaving sucked. She would know better than most people, but when combined with a high fever and an internal system running on less than empty, it was almost unbearable. 

It broke her heart to think he’d been suffering like this in silence for four days. Lucky for him she had happened to be passing by on an escort mission. It was even more fortunate she happened to bring along with her a world renown doctor and surgeon (even if she wasn’t even twenty years old). 

Once the wave of sickness had passed, she reached out for him. “Come here,” she said softly. Wrapping her arms around his shoulders and trunk, she drew him close to her chest. 

“No,” he mumbled, having only the strength to turn his head away. 

“Yes. You’re burning up and need to cool down.” 

The boy lifted his arms, trying with sluggish desperation to push her limbsoff. “No, don’t. I lied. You’re not freezing. You’re warm. Hot–boiling! Stop!”

“Warm or not, I’m cooler than you right now,” she determined, pinning his arms to his sides and pulling him closer. 

He half-sobbed in desperation, resorting to leaning his entire weight forward. Apparently he would have rather face planted into his vomit bucket than lean against her. It was becoming annoying. 

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, releasing her hold on him once she was sure he wasn’t actually going to eat carpet. 

Folded over onto his thighs, arms wrapped around his middle, his face was effectively hidden from her judging gaze. 

It took several long beats before his quiet voice floated into the air, riding on the back of a deep red blush. 

“You……… you look really pretty,” he mumbled quietly. 

Admittedly, it took Taz as second to register what he was saying. Then it was her turn to almost fall off the bed. 

“You’re an idiot!” she blushed, punching his shoulder. 

Somewhere hidden in the mess of mangled black hair and shrugged shoulders, he smirked. 

It warmed her heart. 

She sighed, smiling. “Thank you,” she breathed and opened her arms invitingly. “Now would you please come here so I can make sure you don’t die?” 

Head still hung low enough to conceal his blush, he sat up and leaned against her, cheek pressed against her sternum. 

“There we go,” she sighed contentedly, slipping them further onto the bed. Slowly and gently, she laid down on the sweaty comforter, guiding the young boy to nestle against her. 

With a soft moan, he relaxed, melting into the comforting embrace. His breath was hot, too hot, against the exposed skin of her chest but she didn’t consider moving him. 

How could she when, in a matter of seconds, his breath evened out and the forgotten ghost boy was fast asleep for the first time in four days.

He had tried. He had tried so hard. But now he didn’t need to try anymore. 


	4. Forehead Kisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Kiss my muse on the forehead  
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari

It was hard to trick the huntress. She was an expert in judging distance, accurate almost to the minute with time estimations, and her brain computed data faster than Tucker’s most advanced PDA ever could. Danny was half convinced she part machine, or at least had a GPS embedded into her body at some point, because it was nigh impossible to get her turned around. She always knew exactly where she was and how to get back to where she had been. Oftentimes she could conjure up a shortcut that would shred their travel time by half using logic and reasoning alone. It was a little bit scary.

(Okay, sometimes it was a lot bit scary. That never turned him away, though. Instead, her awesomeness left him a little more awestruck each time with this extraordinary person who called him friend.)

But after months of trial and error, risking life and limb and a little bit of sanity, he had done it. He had taken her to the one place that would surprise her. 

He had taken her to Romania.

* * *

Honestly, it wasn’t hard to figure out where the mysterious red knight originally hailed from. She had told him of her homeland on a few charmed occasions, and had gone so far as to cook him some native cuisine. The challenging part had been narrowing down where  _not_ to take her. Because if he remembered anything from her stories, it was that her homeland - her place of birth - had chewed her up and spat her without much more than a name and the clothes on her back. Her family was gone. Her home destroyed. Her back turned on her country people to never again see their ghostly faces. 

That was something he could relate to. After all, he had spent years of his life afraid of his own parents dissecting him like a car engine - taking out the unfeeling parts to see what made him tick. If only he could leave Amity Park, purge himself of the foul tasting memories this place left in his mind, he would in a heartbeat. Or so, that’s how it would seem. 

In reality, Amity Park was just as much a part of him as his DNA or reflection. He had trudged a path through the halls of Casper High, made his dent in City Hall, even contributed to the beauty of the park by simply admiring it. And, in turn, Casper High had forged him into a resilient metal, City Hall had taught him trickery and deceit, and the park had demonstrated the invaluable lesson of slowing down and letting things be. Brown stone was the color of his blood, his veins the familiar streets around his corner house. He had helped make this city, and this city had made him in return. 

He couldn’t fathom life without Amity Park. 

So he had started a personal quest. He knew the huntress was from Romania, which was a good start. And after delving deep into the recesses of his mind, he had reassembled enough of her story to have an idea the kind of places to avoid. Next step was to find a suitable hill. 

* * *

She had arrived at Fenton Works as she always had, exactly when she intended. It was miraculous, he thought, that no matter where in the country or world she was, she always showed up precisely when he needed her to. Or had summoned her to, as this case was. He had clarified in his message that it was not an emergency, but instructed that she could not arrive early. 

Naturally, she had split the difference - her wanting to come and his punishment for scaring her - and arrived a leisurely two days late.

“Get lost on the way?” he had greeted, careful to close the basement door tightly behind him, should the surprise slip through the cracks. 

She had been weary from her trip and though he loved the way she fell onto the living room couch - making his home comfortably her home - and asked him about his health, he was too excited to keep the surprise a secret for very much longer. 

“You look like you could use a vacation,” he had ventured boldly.

She was quick to spit out an explanation for her haggard state. He was quicker to propose a solution.

“Let’s go. A vacation. Right now.”

She had eyed him skeptically then, and he was frightened she might extract the secret from him with the question behind her forest green eyes. 

“Now?” 

“Sure.”

“I’m hungry.”

“You can eat there.”

“I’m tired.” 

“Okay.” 

“……”

“So let’s go!” 

It was only a matter of leading her down into the basement after that. Her curiosity had won the battle of wills, as he knew it would. Entering the lab, she had noted how he had been cleaning and he had noted with glee her surprise when he restarted the portal. 

“You got it working?” 

“Not only that, but I calibrated it. I can control where it goes by tapping into other portals all around the world.”

“All around the world? So more secret labs.”

“That’s what I thought too when I started. But surprisingly, there are a lot of natural portals that are stable-ish enough to use.” 

“’Stable-ish’?”

He threw the lever, the metal doors sliding open. Green light filled the room, swirling like sunlight through a whirlpool. 

“Shall we?” 

* * *

They were greeted on the other side with the crunch of red leaves under their shoes and air crisp enough to revive the dead. Tazaki gasped. 

“Where…”

“…Welcome home.” 

Scrolling before them was a mountainous landscape. Hills of green and yellow rolled like waves in the ocean, rhythmic and natural. Sharp, pointed strokes of yellow decorated the dunes, tiny trees the shades of autumn used sparingly across the ground. Wider strokes resulted in clumps of reds, browns, and greens, monumental forests made soft through the shedding of their leaves lined the land in a patchwork of nature. Mountains the color of rock and snow were like resting giants in the distance, their collective bases swallowed by a tide of evergreen. The sun bathed the slopes in crystal light, the cloudless sky a gradient of blues and purples. 

This was Romania. Tazaki could feel it in her bones, in the rustling of the leaves and the way the wind flirted with her hair. To breathe the air was to inhale God. To see the folds of the mountains was to be seduced by the west, and the splendor of the oaks sent the east to jealously. Culture, fairy tales, history, ran through these lands, making them, cultivating them in love and war. The lands God has sculpted and man had tilled and bled for. It was indeed her home. Her Romania. 

Danny had found the right hill after all.

“Happy birthday,” he said after they had stood for days, weeks, months, years, taking in the stage decorated perfectly before them. 

Leaning forward, he wound one hand behind her ear, tilting her face toward the leaf covered ground. 

“Happy birthday, Tazaki,” he said again, and a million more times, gentle as a breeze as he rested his lips to her forehead. “Welcome home.” 


	5. Sleepless two days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: My muse hasn't slept in two days and falls asleep on yours  
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari

Danny had been bugging her about when they were going back to Amity Park for a while now. At first she thought it was just nerves - as far as she knew his family was never one for vacations or road trips, and he had been stuck alone in Fenton Works for months now - or he didn’t want to leave his town unattended and dismissed him with calm assurances that, yes, he had packed enough clean clothes and, no, the Ghost Shield around the house wouldn’t run out of power and please Danny,  _just relax - it’ll only be a couple days, four at the most._  He had been quiet about it after that and slowly he’d even started to enjoy himself. She guessed, long ago before everything with his family went down, back when she just barely knew him and he was still young and happy, he had been an extrovert. Shy, understandably so what with the constant bullying and ghost powers, but a real charmer. Someone who could put almost anyone at ease. Someone who almost everyone wanted to see smile after barely getting to know him. 

Or maybe that had just been her. 

A few hours in and Danny had really started to loosen up, which put the huntress’ mind at ease. It was just nerves. He would be fine. He’d started asking questions, commenting on the scenery they drove through, even taking command of the radio once Amity Park’s local stations were too drowned in static to make out. It had been good. He would be fine. 

* * *

They came and went, getting closer and closer to their destination. At some point they stopped and traded vehicles, parking her rental behind a mechanic’s as their new passenger, a large quiet man Danny wasn’t familiar with, took the wheel of his durable SUV. Taz had been worried that Danny would be mistrustful of the stranger - strange only to the ghost boy, or else Taz would not have let him anywhere near them - but the boy’s charm soon won the hunter over and before she knew it, she was the one driving and Cerberus and Danny were conversing loudly, cracking jokes - she’d never known Cerberus’ propensity toward pun making - and comparing fast food joints -  _you actually thought Nasty Burger was a nationwide chain? You really do need to get out more_. They were having a good time and everything was going great. 

“….Hey, how far away are we now?” 

He would be fine. 

Finally they had arrived at their destination and Danny had pulled through like a trooper. An informal town meeting to redraw some territorial lines wasn’t exactly what he would consider a thrilling night on the town, but Taz smiled warmly as the boy sipped his ginger ale, curious eyes watching the proceedings with interest. Turns out he was a whiz at geography, a real kid genius, so he was able to keep up well enough -  _there’s actually train tracks cutting through those woods about here - we passed them on the way - and according to the topography I’d doubt that river would stay in one place long enough to be a predictable border_. She was so proud of him. 

Looking back, however, the huntress should’ve realized then what was going on. His eyes were a little more blue than normal, his skin a little paler. But, still he was out, he was challenged for the first time in years, and he was still grinning, even if it was a little lopsided -  _it’s fine I’m just tired from the trip_. There had really been no reason to pull him out. He had been fine. 

Unfortunately the delegations had lasted longer than she intended, in a good way thanks to Danny’s helpful insight, so her prediction of a few days turned into a week. And it had been taxing, not only on her and the other hunters, but on the boy as well. He sure did keep up appearances, she had to give him that, but she should’ve known something was wrong much earlier on. She should’ve prepared better, been sharper, quicker, faster. But she was too caught up in work and moderating and  _he was so smart what a Fenton after all_ that she didn’t see it. 

He wasn’t fine. He hadn’t been fine for days now. And she wasn’t the only one who saw it either - the weariness in his shoulders, the withdrawn expression, the fact that none of them had really seen him eat anything other than the bar owner’s kindly offered pretzels and ginger ale. The way he would sneak out into the smaller gravel parking lot of the bar or the dingy motel at night and just stare, just stare at nothing for hours on end. Trigger timed him once; Danny didn’t move from his spot, planted like a sign post under the flashing of the neon vacancy sign, for three hours and ten minutes one night. Three hours spent in the parking lot at four am. 

By the end of it all, when Danny had finally stopped staring at motel travel pamphlets or haunting the quiet corners of the bar, moving only to wander in a zombie-like trance to their table and quietly ask the red huntress how much longer she would be, Taz was convinced she had made a terrible mistake. 

“Danny?” she asked, rounding the back bumper of Cerberus’ SUV. He’d been out here for a while now, disappeared again. It was three in the afternoon and felt like months had passed since they had arrived, all stiff and sleepy from the long car trip. The storm front to the north held the chilly temperature captive, the submissive clouds hanging low across the gray horizon. 

“Are we leaving?” he asked, leaning uncomfortably to one side. The cool metal of the bumper was pressed to his cheek, black hair clinging to it in unrelenting static. 

She sighed, climbing down to sit next to him. Her boots crunched on the gravel and she was immediately uncomfortable. How had he managed to sit like that for hours? 

“Soon. Do you want anything to eat? I promise Ernie has more than pretzels.” 

“How soon?”

That was hard to tell and he knew it. Still, after six days of ongoing deliberation, compromising and organizing, she could tell the hunters were ready to call it quits, whether the task was finished or not. 

“This afternoon.”

“It’s already this afternoon.”

“By dinner time then, for sure.”

“You don’t eat.”

She raised an eyebrow. He might have won that one. “Oh? And you’re one to talk. We may not eat three square meals a day but at least we live off more than pretzels and carbonated water.” 

“It’s gonna rain,” he mused quietly, sliding down to lean against her. 

She shifted to welcome his weight and thought he wasn’t really talking to her. 

“Where?”

“Home. It’s been coming down for two days now. Started about eleven the night before last. Most of it’s over downtown, though. They always get it. But the south end has been hit pretty hard too. They’ll be worried about flooding from the lake if it keeps going for much longer. The piers are definitely closed.” He paused to reflect, head tilted back against the curve of her neck. “They’re getting stir crazy.” 

“The people?” 

“The portals.”

“Oh.” Suddenly loading Danny into the backseat of Cerberus’ SUV and gunning it back to Amity Park seemed like the most rational thing to do. He would forgive her, probably, in time, but even if not getting a lecture from a hunter scared of his own shadow was the least she deserved. She had done this to Danny. She had ignored the signs, she had convinced him it would be fine. 

Well, he wasn’t fine. 

“You’re freezing,” she commented, pulling the boy a little closer and zipping his jacket. He tilted his head back and glared at her. “I mean more so than usual. Doesn’t help you’ve been sitting out here in the cold for hours.” 

“I had to be close.” He was losing it, she could tell in the way his weight was collapsed against her, head rolling lazily to one side.

“And there’s some rule book somewhere that says you can’t be close  _and_ warm?” Another shift and his head was cradled against her chest, torso turned to her. It probably wasn’t the most comfortable position and she really should have gotten him inside where it was safe and warm and  _not about to rain_  before letting him doze off, but the way his words slurred told her it was inevitable. Her silly little ghost boy passing out in the cold and fog because he was too worried about his home to give pneumonia a second thought. 

“Come on,” she announced jostling the boy from his almost slumber as she stood. He groaned in protest and slowly fell forward, content to lay face down in the chilled gravel. The huntress rolled her eyes at how his face was conveniently turned away. She didn’t need to see his smirk to know it was there. “Now you’re just messing with me.”

A muffled “I’m tired” came from around a face full of rocks. 

The redhead rolled her eyes. “Well I promise Ernie’s booths are a lot more comfortable than the  _gravel parking lot_.” 

“Promise?” 

She was not about to pull a perfectly capable young man to his feet because he’d rather eat some concrete than tell her something was wrong. She would, however, consider guiding him upright and leading him inside in the most inconspicuous manner possible because it was technically her fault he was like this in the first place. 

So she compromised. 

“Promise,” she said and offered her wrist. He took it without looking - how he did that she’d never know - and braced herself as he stood. He really did look haggard. “Now let’s go. And, hey, if we’re not done by sundown we’re out of here, okay?” 

“It’s already night at home.”

“There’s just no winning with you is there?” 


	6. Flower Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: My muse gives yours a flower  
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari

This time, Danny had known she was coming. Luckily, he had been riding a rather vigorous upswing in his mood for a few days now so he had had plenty of time to prepare the house for her arrival. It wasn’t going to be long, as her letter had indicated, but he was happy to her have her all the same. He had spent his days preparing at a leisurely pace, taking full advantage of the three day heads up. 

First order of business had been chasing away Fenton Works’ musty smell with some sunlight and music. His blinds stayed open now - he wondered if the neighbors noticed - and he had even cracked a window open in Jazz’s room. The effect had been almost immediate as the uncharacteristically  _perfect_ outside air wafted through the house, carrying a summer breeze and the distant noise of the city. He had been half-tempted to never close his dear sister’s window ever again. 

Next, he had focused on cleaning. And what a productive afternoon that had been. During the day, when the sunlight reflecting off the house’s glistening sheen of a protective shield was his only witness, he had blasted the music he hadn’t listened to or thought of in years. Humpty Dumpty, he had learned, was perfect for vacuuming or dusting - chores which required lots of movement. The hand-banging rock of his youth reignited a sense of rhythm in him and the house was spotless, top to bottom, in record time. He had even been so moved with the thrums of the bass, he didn’t think twice about vacuuming his parents’ old room, sliding their window open a generous few inches as well.

Ladies First, a band that far exceeded Humpty Dumpty in philosophical undertones and a fresh hip hop sound, however, lent its up-beat tones and catchy lyrics to less physical chores. Danny really shouldn’t have been as surprised as he was with just how many lyrics he remembered, even while intensely focusing on wiping down the kitchen counters. The words rolled off his tongue without a second thought and his chores were done in spotless form.

By the end of the day, the thick carpets had been mapped with vacuum trails, the kitchen smelt of lemon and disinfectant, a breeze had shaken the blinds upstairs, and he had really forgotten how much he missed singing. And he had still had an entire day left to plan and prepare a meal before she was supposed to arrive.

That part had been easy; people who had done a lot of traveling didn’t want heavy or greasy food. They were tired from the trip, but usually filled with excitable relief at finally arriving at their destination. They wanted something light but satisfying, often times familiar, and always homemade. He wasn’t much of a cook - not a single Fenton had ever been able to successfully create a meal beyond flattening food stuffs between two pieces of bread - but he had been raised a scientist. And cooking was a technical endeavor, a recipe a rule book, and the ingredients his chemicals. 

Plus, knowing whom exactly he was expecting to serve was a rare advantage he had this time and he wasn’t about to screw it up. So, after some quick deliberation between a few different recipes the lab downstairs had been happy to print, he had decided on a spicy jambalaya over rice with a side salad.

Once the ingredients had been gathered and the crock pot prepared, all that had been left to do was wait. 

* * *

He didn’t panic when she was a little late. He simply turned down the stove, stored the salad ingredients back in the fridge to avoid wilting spinach, and waited. The longer he had to wait, though, the harder distracting himself had become. The enjoyment he had found in his CDs wouldn’t percolate, the evening news didn’t interest him, and the minutes kicked and screamed against their own advancement. 

He reread the letter, (she didn’t specify when exactly she had expected to roll into town), double checked the date (cell towers didn’t lie, so there was no use in booting up the old computer downstairs to make sure he hadn’t fallen into a black hole), and resigned himself nervously to his fate: it would be a long wait. 

Calling was out of the question. That was obvious in the fact she had sent a letter in the first place. He didn’t understand the specifics, he didn’t  _know_ the specifics, but he understood the code nonetheless. Don’t call. I’ll be there. Just wait. 

So wait he did. 

The usual seven o’clock program was starting on the TV - he wasn’t interested in seeing random people win money, he just needed assurance that, outside his living room and kitchen, the world really was still there - when his senses perked up. Someone - a powerful presence - was nearing. He could feel them like the air before a storm or the deja vu of a dream just out of reach.

In no time at all, Danny heard footsteps nearing the property. In a sizable physical effort to not act like an anxious - and extremely lonely - homemaker, he decided he would not rush to the door and fling it open with gusto. Yet. Instead, he rushed into the kitchen and started emptying the fridge of its partly prepared salad ingredients. 

Darn her for almost making the spinach wilt. 

There were two knocks, the only purpose of which were to act as a warning that she was coming on in, before she pushed the door open and came on in. 

“I’m here.” 

“Kitchen,” he called out, giving the jambalaya one last stir. He didn’t need to turn to know she had entered. “Good trip?” 

“ _Long_ trip,” she whined, collapsing heavily into her usual chair, bags forgotten in the living room.

“I’m sure.” He glanced back at her, switching off the stove. “So it went well, then? You okay?” He didn’t know the specifics of her situation, but he knew enough. And the modest black dress she was wearing, the retrospective slump in her shoulders, and her twice retouched eye makeup told him everything else he was missing. 

“It was hard.”

He brought the pot over, carefully depositing it onto the table. “They always are.” 

She sniffed, and he saw a little color return to her puffy eyes. “Is that jambalaya?” she wondered hopefully, sitting up and taking in the rice and meat mixture before her. 

“Or something similar. New recipe, haven’t tried it yet. But rice and salad on the side just in case.” Taking her offered bowl, he scooped her a moderate helping. The chunks of meat and shrimp soaked up the brown rice, the smell of the diced celery and spices making her mouth water. It didn’t smell as wild as she usually preferred the Creol dish, but Danny was a Midwestern Caucasian boy. Chili peppers were probably as hot as he could handle. Besides, she wasn’t in the mood to wipe at her nose again today. 

“Looks really good,” she said, a long forgotten hunger in his stomach bubbling to life as she waited for him to fill his own plate. 

He smirked and sat. “I tried. But if it’s a little overcooked, that’s so not my fault.” 

She went for the beef first. “Maybe don’t put it on so early next time.” 

“Maybe I’ll try something not as time consuming next time,” he replied quickly, snagging a pile of spinach. 

Around another mouthful of celery and rice, she nodded. He had won that round, no questions. 

“What? I brought you a souvenir.” 

Danny’s first instinct really should not have been what it was, but before any other thoughts could register, he was gaping at her in curious shock. 

“From a funeral??”

She snorted at him and rice very nearly went up her nose. 

“Yeah? And? The guy was a jerk, anyway!” 

“Taz!” he gasped, grinning. 

“What? He was! I only went because they couldn’t find enough pallbearers!”

Chuckling, he propped one elbow on the table and leveled a look at her. “Look, Taz, I think I know a thing or two about respecting the dead here. So trust me when I say stealing from a funeral is the  _number one_  way of getting cursed. Like, it’s practically guaranteed. Whatever you snagged from that guy is guaranteed, one hundred percent,  _undeniably_ haunted.” 

The huntress mirrored his position and returned the look with a raised eyebrow. 

Danny smirked at her. 

“So what’d you get me?” 

* * *

In the living room, Taz rummaged through her leather travel bag, taking out the odd item and setting it on the couch beside her. Her pistol, a small tiki statue which Danny frowned at curiously, a black travel case of toiletries, a box of bullets, sneakers, another small statue that got even a deeper frown from the ghost boy, and a stray, unmatched hoop earring joined their equally mismatched companions littering the cushion. 

“Ah, where did that stupid thing go. I bet  _anything_ Ripper grabbed it behind my back, the jerk,” the huntress was muttering, completely oblivious to the ever deepening frown on Danny’s forehead. It might’ve just been him, but he was fairly certain one of the tikis just sent a rather flirtatious wink his direction. 

“Oh, there it freaking is,” Taz sighed, pulling something out and handing it to Danny. He took it curiously. It was a third wooden ornament - though luckily this one was completely faceless - about two inches tall and four wide. It was shaped into a water lily, only the pointed petals were shorter and numerous in number, folding out from the center in perfect top down symmetry. A symbol in the language he didn’t recognize was branded onto the underside, and the edges of the many petals were polished and singed black. 

“It’s….” 

She expected him to now understand the symbolism behind it, so the huntress was quick with an explanation: “In many lesser known Middle Eastern cultures, the water lily is a sign of tranquility and happiness. It’s seen as a sign of good luck and hospitality since it only grows around water. Which, in the desert, is often a hard commodity to come by.” 

A small frown wrinkled his brows as he inspected the small gift, her words sinking in. 

“So…. did you just give me a flower?” 

She gaped at him for a moment, but quickly recovered with a growl. “It’s a symbol of good fortune and kindness!” 

“Yeah. A fortunate and kind flower!” 

“Well fine! If you don’t want it–” 

“Back off!” he hissed, clutching the statue to his chest and twisting away. “I like the lucky water flower statue thing!” 

Taz chuckled, sitting back and shrugging. Technically, she got him to keep the gift so she was counting that as a win. Which meant, for the evening, they were tied. 

“Where’re you gonna put it?” she asked, watching with satisfaction as he more thoroughly inspected the small item. 

“Probably on my dresser somewhere,” he replied, trying and failing to figure out which way was up for the symbol at the bottom. He nodded forward. “Or the coffee table or something. Somewhere people can see it.” 

That was all the thanks she would push for, so she took it with a quiet nod. “It’ll probably float if you put it in water.” 

Considering what she said, he tossed it into the air a couple times, testing its weight in his hand. “Probably,” he finally concurred, leaning forward and resolutely setting it in the middle of the table. 

“So. You want any dessert?” They had sat around and reminisced for a couple hours after dinner, and while the dishes still begged to be washed, he figured the huntress would appreciate one more late night snack before heading off to bed for the evening. 

She raised an eyebrow suggestively. 

“You have cheesecake?” 

Standing, he gave her an obvious look. “For you?” 

That was a yes, a blatant yes, and was all Danny needed to tip the scale. Admittedly, Taz would have happily forfeited their silent game of the evening if it meant a raspberry cream drizzled slice of heaven. 

She couldn’t repress a silent chuckle as she starting scooping her belongings back into her back. How did he always know exactly what she craved? 

* * *

That little wooden water lily stayed on Danny’s coffee table until the end of his days, a silent welcome to the infinite number of guests Fenton Works had housed over the years. Young or old, male or female, from this dimension or the next, everyone knew the doors of a certain haunted building on a certain street corner in a certain town of Amity Park were always open for them. Whether they needed a place to layover for the evening or a stop to recover from serious wounds, they were welcomed, invited, and  _expected_ to stay at Fenton Works, the one with the little wooden lily on the coffee table. 

And if Danny ever figured out the mysterious symbol on the bottom was the residue of a $2 price tag from a thrift store a few states over, he never told a soul. 


	7. Hearts and Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Valentines  
> Characters: Star

Danny didn’t even realize what time of the year it was. Time in Amity Park was weird. Sometimes it would fly by at a break neck speed, leaving the inhabitants dazed and wondering where the months had gone. Other times, it would trudge along like a slug traveling over sticky paper. Those were the days that left students groaning and tempers on a short fuse. Every day was a Monday, the hands on the clock gripped tightly to their numbers, and the snow refused to melt. 

The last couple of months had been like that for the resident ghost boy. Of course, he could argue that the last couple of  _years_ had been like that. Ever since his sister had moved out for college, his friends and classmates leaving town for every other reason imaginable, and his parents had gotten an irresistible offer from the Guys in White, the old Fenton Works building had been abandoned. Left alone, stoic and silent on a street corner. Over the years, rumors had started surfacing among the townspeople that, though the building was abandoned, it was not, in fact, empty. A presence still resided within the walls, silently driving the neighbors away. Noises could be heard every so often - occasionally enough to be remembered but never so frequently as to be suspicious - and on rare occasions the blinds in the upstairs bedroom would be pulled back, or the window opened just a crack. Clearly, Fenton Works, the house on the corner formerly owned by the resident ghost hunting family of crazies, was haunted. 

Not that anyone was surprised. In the years that followed, the house and its resident spook became something of a local legend, something meddlesome teenagers used to scare middleschoolers and the same concerned parents brought up at every city hall meeting. The most common theory was that some of the residue the family left behind from their experiments had animated itself somehow and was too stupid to leave.

Little did they know how right they were. 

* * *

At first Danny had been confused. One by one, everyone around him had left. Even people he didn’t care about had packed up and skipped town. The Mansons had moved somewhere with “a little more culture”, Tucker had been forced to relocate for his mom’s budding career, and Dash hopped onto a football scholarship first chance he got. Paulina had left in a puddle of fake tears from her fake friends. Naturally, Danny thought it had all been his fault somehow. If he had only been better at ghost fighting, maybe a lot of parents wouldn’t have felt it so necessary to leave. If he had been more careful, more vigilant, trained harder, or planned smarter, he would have been able to maintain a better public image. 

But then his parents left and he knew something was wrong. In the solitude of his childhood home, pieces starting falling into place. Alone with only his thoughts and nothing to occupy them, he started feeling a pulse under his skin that didn’t belong to either of his halves. It was the pulse of the city and it thrummed through him like lines of traffic through his veins, city blocks lining his muscles. Eventually, his confusion turned to comprehension and things started making sense. 

His city was alive and changing and always pushing people away. Whereas normal people felt a subconscious pull to return to their childhood homes, to relive a sense of nostalgia and capture that wonder of their youths, Amity Park embedded its citizens with a sense to leave, a drive to escape to greener pastures. Once Danny discovered this, his life made a lot more sense. 

Then came the discovery of being unable to leave. He was tied with an invisible, unbreakable cord to this town or, more specifically, the Ghost Portal downstairs. Sleepless days and nights of unrelenting research and experimentation yielded varying results as to why he couldn’t leave. He just learned that the farther he went, the sicker and weaker he got. 

In the end, a few truths made themselves known to the ghost boy: everyone in Amity Park left at some point; he could never, ever leave; and microwave dinners must be reheated for  _exactly_ as long as the packaging says. 

He had been alone for too long - stuck in a fog that only occasionally lifted long enough to let a few slivers of sunlight through the cracked blinds. Surprisingly, his life of solitude and shadows and keeping his existence a secret didn’t lend itself to a particularly exciting existence. Indistinguishable days blurred together into weeks and months. Seasons came and went, the moon cycled through its phases in an unending dance alongside the calendar. 

Before he realized it, he noticed people exchanging roses and a very intense emphasis on pink on absolutely everything. He blinked from his perch on the clock tower, where he lounged, invisible to the human eye, and observed the rotation of the town below. The air was ripe with hormones and explosively volatile self-esteem, questions unasked and relationships unaffirmed spun in the chilly winter breezes. 

Was it February already? 

Danny remembered well all the Valentines Days he had suffered through as a kid. When he was young, the pathetic lack of mass produced store bought cards he never received didn’t bother him. At least, it didn’t until Mr. Carnigan made it a point to tell them that friends (particularly two friends of the same sex, particularly two friends of same  _male_ gender) shouldn’t exchange Valentines cards. After that, he had Sam’s unending anti-establishment, anti-commercialism dribble to distract him from the gaping hole of loneliness in his soul. 

Turning, he floated off into the air, trajectory aimed to Fenton Works. He didn’t receive any meaningful Valentines Day cards back then and he certainly wasn’t going to now. 

* * *

February ticked by and Danny managed to keep his mind off the quickly approaching holiday. Until the day of, that is. He was wasting time in his living room, feeling the flicker of the town’s late night excitement buzz in his system like a neon sign. Parties were being thrown, restaurants were struggling to seat all their guests, and procrastinators panicked in the candy section.  Commercialized, indeed. 

After a few hours, the hum died down as parties came to a natural end and people headed home. That’s when he felt it: a twitch in the back of his head, a little nudge in his numerous senses. Someone was approaching Fenton Works with intent to disturb its stoic melancholy. It was a presence he recognized, but couldn’t place, like a familiar smell of the deja vu of a forgotten dream. Whoever it was, they weren’t a threat though, he could tell that for sure. In fact, they seemed to be the opposite of a threat. 

A friend coming to him late at night and it was a presence he didn’t recognize? Danny couldn’t help himself. Before he even realized what he was doing, his curiosity got the best of him and he was transforming and melting through the floor. 

Outside, he materialized through the sidewalk, blinking in confusion at the person messing with his mailbox. 

“Star?” he gawked, forgetting the loudness of his voice. 

The young woman jumped, startled, scraps of paper leaping from her fingers. Instinctively, Danny blinked visible and raised his hands in a peaceful gesture.

“Whoa, whoa! It’s okay!” he said, floating several inches back. He grinned bashfully as she seemed to recognize him, suddenly at a loss for words. It had been years since he had seen her - or anyone else from school - and the sight of her brought him back to the younger, simpler time they had shared. 

Quickly, he panicked. “Uh, I mean. It is Star, right? Star Andersson? You went to Casper High with, uh, Paulina, right?” 

The young woman gasped. Danny noticed a flicker of sadness in her eyes, but it was quickly displaced with a look of marvel. 

“You’re here! You’re totally here!” she gasped. “I was right! Paulina, that - she never believed me! But I knew I was right!” Pausing, she panicked, looking up at Danny. “Wait. You… you remember me?”

Danny nodded slowly. So apparently she and Paulina were still talking. “Of course I do! I, uh, actually remember everyone from school. Your school. Casper High. Everyone who went to school. With you. At Casper High.” 

Star stared at him, eyebrows slowly coming together.

Danny gulped and tried to look impressive. Or at least not like a stalker, or, at the very least, the undead creep of Casper High. 

“I, uh… A lot of weird things happened to…  _there_. So, you know, you hang around people long enough, you pick up on a couple names here and there. Like, fighting off the occasional ghost warden from Hell who’s trying to possess the mayor to turn the town against you, or rescuing the town’s adults (and your jerky older sister who  _thinks_ she’s adult) from a crazy rocker psycho chick, or defeating a psychopathic psychiatrist who wants to harvest your DNA for her body suit - you know, the normal.” 

Eventually, the young blonde woman before him started to smile, an expression that was torn between being star struck and wanting to run for her life. 

“It totally is you, isn’t it? Like, totally totally?” 

He grinned, the weight of all those memories heavy on his mind. “Totally.” 

Her blue eyes wandered over him, hesitant but eager to get a good look at the infamous yet elusive ghost boy. Danny, wanting to relieve the tension, took a moment to take in her features as well. Her iconic blonde hair was still long, but  curled in a sophisticated way. A modest, knee length dress was wrapped comfortably around her curves. She always did look good in orange. She was wearing some trendy heels that showed off her painted toenails. At her feet was a scattering of pink pieces of paper. 

He frowned. “Are those–” 

“My Valentines!” she shrieked suddenly, dropping to her knees in a panic to gather the small cards. 

Danny went to help, but noticed the mailbox behind her. Remembering his original curiosity, he reached forward and pried open the door. 

“No wait–!” Star demanded. Danny froze, hand on the lock, and looked down at her with a question in his green eyes. Clearing her throat and clutching the rest of the cards close, she stood. A few inches from her, he noticed how much she had grown. She had always been a lanky girl, but he couldn’t ever remember being this close to her. It was surreal and he wanted to move back, but this was his mailbox and she had demanded he not touch it. She was in control here and he didn’t want to scare her off. 

Nervously, she shuffled the papers in her hands and scooped a stray bit of hair behind her ear. 

“Sorry, I, uh, just….”

His eyebrows rose questionably. “Everything okay?” 

“What? Yeah! Yeah, I, just…” She gulped loudly. “I didn’t expect you to actually be here. Or get it. Or actually read it.” 

That brought up another question he hadn’t even considered. “Then… how did you know to put it here?” 

She grinned, blue eyes lighting up. “Oh, at the Fentons’ old mailbox? That was easy! I heard the rumors going around town that you were still, you know…” 

He frowned expectantly. 

“… _a thing_ , even after so long. And you are always around somewhere, so obviously you totally have some sort of base of operations or headquarters in a central location in town. 

“And then I heard that the Fentons not only abandoned their old house, but that it was totally haunted, and everyone knows those crazies were into some serious paranormal stuff, so I bet they totally had ghost equipment on hand, most likely in their basement somewhere. And considering all that epic stuff Danny pulled back when the adults were kidnapped by that rocker ghost chick, I know they had lots of it. And I would totally bet they left a lot of it behind, especially since they disappeared in the middle of the night like they did. 

“So I just figured, the ghost boy is still in town, he totally has a base, and the Fentons’ old house of ghost stuff is  _totally_ abandoned, and everything just kind of fell into place.” 

Danny blinked at her, flabbergasted. She… she thought that stunt he pulled against Ember was epic? 

“Wow.” 

He was stunned. Well and truly stunned. Here was this, by all accounts, extremely dim chick he had basically grown up being tormented by, rambling excitedly to him about her expert sleuthing and actually being really good at it? 

“I know right!” she squealed, Valentines forgotten in her excitedly clenched hands. She was positively giddy that her investigating had paid off. And, he had to admit, it looked really good on her. “Once I saw the pieces they totally fell together and well…” Trailing off, her blue eyes shifted to the mailbox. “I just… I wanted to…” 

Danny followed her curiously, puzzle pieces of his own falling into place. 

“Listen, Star, I can’t tell you very much, but I can say the first thing I did when the Fentons left was snoop around their place. I deactivated most of their security systems and modified the rest so I know it’s a safe place to… I mean, if you wanted to…”

“…To…?” 

He sighed. Allowing his ghostly weightlessness to lift him into the air a few feet, he looked down at her and mustered all the friendliness he could into one purely honest smile. 

“Do you trust me?” 

Star stared at him, taken back by his words and the gloved hand reached toward her. 

* * *

Sitting on the roof of Fenton Works, under the shadow of the Emergency Ops Center, next to the legendary ghost boy wasn’t exactly the romantic evening Star Andersson had imagined for herself on Valentines Day, and yet there she was. With him, in his space, completely secluded and vulnerable. And yet, as she studied him and the way the stars twinkled in his glowing eyes and the easy smile on his face, she couldn’t think of any place she had ever felt safer. 

“You okay?” he asked, and she quickly realized she had been staring. 

“Oh. Um, yeah,” she replied quickly, turning away.

He was still searching her with those eyes, expression full of sincerity. 

“You sure? I can take you back down–”

“No!” she interrupted, a blush unexpectedly painting her cheeks. She shoved some loose hair behind her ear and attempted to regain her composure. Star Andersson did not blush. Not ever. And yet the anxiety that was bubbling up inside her about what she was going to say to this mysterious ghost boy, the local legend among her and her classmates, could bring it out of her effortlessly. 

“Uh… I mean, not yet.” 

He fidgeted next to her and it was so human and real. 

“Okay, if you’re sure. I can take you back whenever you want. Just say the word.” 

Another blush overtook her fine features. She had a lot of things she wanted to say to him, but “take me back” wasn’t anywhere on the list. 

“No. No, it’s fine. I’m good,” she said, giving him a reassuring grin. 

He returned it with a playful, slightly challenging one. “Yeah?” 

“Totally.” 

“Alright,” he grinned, turning back to the stars before them. He was completely at ease and it brought a content sigh out of her. “So… can I read it?” he asked suddenly, raising a gloved hand to reveal the Valentines she had put in the mailbox. 

She blinked at him. That was the Valentines card -  _the_ Valentines card - she had hidden in his mailbox.

“Wh… when?” 

His playful grin and knowing eyebrow wiggle was all the answer she was going to get. With a shaky sigh, she considered her options. Either let him open the letter and read what she had wanted him to from the start, or take advantage of this monumental opportunity to tell him, in person, something she had wished for years she could. 

“Just… wait. Please?” He seemed disappointed but she somehow knew he was take that to heart and obey her wish, even if the go ahead went to the grave with her. Which…. was a really morbid thought. 

“Wait until after I tell you what’s in it,” she quickly added. That look was too much and she had put that thing in his mailbox so he would read it, after all. What was the difference between writing it and saying it? 

Everything, apparently, she realized as her mouth suddenly decided to forget how to speak. 

“Okay…” he said, and she felt the gentle prodding he underscored the word with, she really did, but suddenly her well rehearsed words vanished and the replacements sounded stupid and she couldn’t decide where to start. 

“So do you and Paulina still talk?” he asked suddenly, but casually, and she gaped at him. Her mind sputtered to keep up with his sudden change of topic. For his part, he was looking at her with interest, but something in the shape of his brows said he already knew the answer.  “You said earlier that she wouldn’t have believed you - about all this? So are you two still talking, then?” 

Like a lightening bolt her brain started working again and everything fell back into place. 

“Oh. Uh, not so much, actually. Not anymore.” 

Danny looked away, saddened. He knew all too well what that felt like. 

“I’m sorry. I know you two were close.” 

Star shrugged. 

“Close enough. She was a good friend, but not my best friend.” 

Taking a moment, Danny thought about those words, images of a tearful goodbye replaying in his head. Wow had he ever been wrong. 

“Still. Even losing a good friend is hard.” 

“Yeah, but it was a long time ago. Back when she moved away. Still see her posts online, though, every so often and she seems to be doing well.”

“Good,” was Danny’s automatic response, though he wasn’t sure if he felt it good that Star was still keeping in touch in a way with her friend, or that the tormentor of his youth was doing well. He smiled to himself. Guess time really does heal all wounds. “What about you, though? Where’d you end up?” 

“Oh I just go to school here.” 

“Here?” He frowned at her in confusion. “Here where?” 

“At Slimer’s Community College? Downtown?” At his unresponsive face, she sighed, continuing her story anyway. “I’m working towards a journalism degree. Totally going to be an investigative journalist when I graduate.” 

That was something he understood. 

“Investigative journalist, huh? That’s awesome!” 

She lit up like a light and turned to him. “You think so?”

“Totally! I mean, look at what you figured out tonight alone! You’re gonna kick some butt.” 

Still grinning, she turned away, eyes roaming over the neighborhood rooftops. 

“I hope so. Gonna have to leave town to do it, though. Nothing happens here, not really.” She gave him an even glance. “Nothing  _other than_  ghost attacks. I need to go where the stories are. Where the excitement is.” 

Danny gave her a moment to breathe, contemplating her words in his head. 

“Is that what this is for?” he asked, raising the Valentines again. 

Unable to look at it, she nodded. “Yeah. Putting in my goodbyes now. Saying everything I ever wanted to say so I can leave with a totally clean slate.” 

_That_  he  _definitely_  understood. Respected it, even. It hurt, obviously, hearing that she, too, was leaving Amity Park behind. Not that he could blame her, though. He would kill to be able to leave. Or die for it, if it really came to that. 

In the distance, the clock tower struck midnight. Danny and Star glanced that way, counting the dongs but refusing to move. It felt wrong to cut this short before it even really started. But that was the funny thing about time. 

Sighing, Danny clapped his hands suddenly, pulling himself to his feet with way more effort than a normal ghost should have needed. 

“Tell you what,” he began, eyes among the stars. Pausing, he turned to her, gaze intense as he handed back the unopened Valentine. “You keep this. And once you’re a famous investigative journalist and I’m an old, weary ghost stuck in this one ghost town, you come back to Amity Park and you find me. Do that, and you can tell me everything you wanted to tonight.” 

She looked at him challengingly. It was a tempting offer, but she could sense more was at play. “And me? What do I get out of that?” 

“Other than some closure?” 

“Other than some closure.” 

He grinned. “I will tell you whether you’re right or wrong.” 

Admittedly, that was an offer that was difficult to refuse. And all she needed to do was play the waiting game. She could do that. She had been doing that for years now. Just wait it out a little longer and she’d finally get to finish the most important puzzle of her life. 

With a determined smirk, she took his hand. 

“Deal,” she said and they shook on it. Quickly and fluidly he pulled her to her feet, situating his arms around her in a bridal hold with practiced ease. She wrapped her arms loosely around his too cold neck - just for a lack of nowhere else to put them - and wondered if she was responsible for the content grin on his face as he kicked off the old roof of the abandoned Fenton Works building on the corner, her crumbled Valentines cards fluttering through the air behind them. 

She paid them no mind. After all, she had found her ghost boy, exactly where she knew he would be. Those backup copies were no longer needed. 

* * *

That night, as Danny lay on the roof, under the shadow of the Emergency Ops Center, he reflected on the events that has just transpired. Never once had he been given a sincere Valentines card from a female. Not once in his however many years of life. And now, one of his tormentors, one of the girls who had taken pleasure in causing him and his friends pain and heartache had given her a written confession, signed, sealed, and delivered with quite literally a bow on top. And he had turned her away, instead negotiating that she come see him in the far off future and tell him what he already knew the note said. 

And he wouldn’t have had it any other way. 


	8. Dapper

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: My muse is wearing a suit or tux  
> Characters: Tazaki Hikari

“I swear, the only thing I ever seen you in are those same sweaters and jeans,” Tazaki sighed, shaking her head. Her luggage toppled to the floor behind her, discarded. 

Danny looked up at her from where he was perched on the couch, elbows and knees amid a scattering of papers, notes, and charts. He watched her curiously.

“That’s because this is the only thing I wear,” he replied, giving his outfit a brief glance. He was wearing the same thing he always wore - a blue sweater and light blue jeans (his leather jacket had been tossed somewhere a while ago) - and wondered what they had done to warrant such a protest. 

The huntress took her usual seat across from him, reclining in his dad’s old chair. She was still eyeing him.

“Do you even own anything else?” 

“Do you?” came Danny’s smart reply, nodding to her ensemble. “You’re wearing that jacket every time I see you.”

She shrugged. 

“So?” 

Danny gaped at her.

“So you can wear the same outfit and I can’t?” 

A long finger pointed at him and she shook her head.

“See, I don’t wear the same  _outfit_. Just the same  _jacket_. At least I have more than one different style of shirts.” 

“I have other shirts,” he replied, trying and failing to reoccupy himself with his papers. At her level glance, he shrugged, quietly adding that, “I just don’t really wear them…” 

“And why not?” 

“Why does it matter?” Her hidden agenda behind the questioning made continuing his research nearly impossible. He had half a mind to abandon it altogether, or at least until he could stuff her face with some food. That always shut her up for a while. 

“Because it’s boring. I wear this jacket because it’s leather and has pockets for things like bullets and rosaries,” the redhead explained, pinching the zipper of her jacket. 

Danny rolled his eyes. “And I wear mine because my ghost core acts like a chunk of liquid nitrogen inside of me and I’m always freezing.”

She gestured to him. “And the shirt and jeans?”

“And the  _sweater_ and jeans.” 

There was a moment of silence as she contemplated what he had said and for a blissful minute he thought she would drop the whole ridiculous thing altogether so he could get back to work. He was studying up on his parents’ research on the radioactive energy ectoplasm emitted, hoping that if he could isolate a sample of the unstable cells he could use it to track portals before they opened.

His train of thought was almost full steam ahead when the huntress spoke again: “What ever happened to that white shirt you used to wear?”

He sighed, the likes of which he had never sighed before, and hung his head in desperation.

“Do you just want to rummage through my closet for yourself? Because if you–”

“Okay,” she said and was already on her feet, halfway up the stairs before he even realized what had just happened. 

“Hey, wait a minute!” he called suddenly, scrambling after her and trying not to trip on his dad’s Styrofoam ball model of a radiated cell. “Hold on! You can’t just–”

A disembodied cackle came from upstairs. “You  _just_ said I could!” 

“That was a rhetorical question! Rhetorical!” he shouted, climbing the stairs himself. He rounded the corner just in time to see a flash of crimson hair disappear into his room and something in his gut twisted sharply. Which was ridiculous. It wasn’t like he was in trouble or anything. He was an adult - or somewhere thereabouts…. probably - and could very well decide for himself what he wanted to wear. And he had been wearing the most practical, comfiest outfit he owned. At least he  _was_ fully dressed and not lounging around in his underwear like a two year old. 

He skidded into his room and, sure enough, the red huntress was already up to her elbows in his wardrobe, his pile of dirty clothes shoved to the side. Well too late to stop her now, he decided, crossing his arms and leaning against his desk. This was a fight he would just have to grin and bear.

“Sweaters… sweaters… sweaters… ooh, that one’s cute,” she commented, a striped button down joined the steadily growing pile of clothes on the bed. 

He hummed at it.

“What?” 

“Nothing,” he shrugged. “Just forgot I had that one.” 

With an eye roll she went back to work.

“I’m gonna be hearing that a lot, aren’t I?” she wondered, face and words muffled by the forest of cotton. 

He shrugged again, watching a black turtle neck flop onto the bed.

“Probably.” 

She rummaged in silence for a couple more minutes, and he took a moment to survey his room. It was weird seeing it from this angle. His normal path didn’t usually deviate from the bed to the door and back again. In fact, he hadn’t used his desk much at all in years. Which was obvious by the level of dust that had collected on its surface.

Grimacing, he wiped off his dirty finger onto his pants. He really should dust again, which sucked because it felt like he just did last week.

Suddenly a low whistle sounded from inside the closet and he leaned forward, curious as to what he could possibly still own that she could possibly find that would  _possibly_ elicit a reaction like that.

“Well well well, what is this?” she asked teasingly, pulling out none other than his old gray suit.

Danny’s eyes widened at it. The jacket, the white shirt, the blue tie - they were all still there, exactly as he had left them after escaping Wisconsin.

Noticing his expression, Taz frowned softly. “Everything okay?” she asked. 

Quietly, Danny nodded, taking the suit from her and sitting on the bed. He stared at the fabric, played with the four buttons on the front, remembered when Jazz had taught him how to tie a tie.

“Yeah…” he breathed quietly. Then, coming back to himself: “Yeah. I’m fine. Just… a lot of memories in this thing.” He had met Vlad Masters in this. He had been captured by Vlad Plasmius in this. He had overshadowed his dad and fought for his life in this stupid suit. And that didn’t even get into the debacle that had been the freshman year school dance. 

“Good?” Taz prodded quietly, and Danny shook his head at her. 

“Not really.” Slipping it off his lap, he held it by the hanger, inspecting it at arm’s length “A few that could’ve been. Eh, they were for the most part. It was just the rest of the times…” 

The redhead sighed, looking away. She took inventory of what she had dispensed to the bed as she tried to figure out what to say. Staring one of his old white T-shirts, she smirked.

“Think it still fits?” 

Danny scoffed at her. “Are you kidding? That was  _years_ ago. And it  _barely_ fit then.”

“But how will you know for sure unless…” 

He looked at her sideways.

“Tazaki. This thing  _will not_  fit. I can promise you that.” 

“Oh come on! You couldn’t have grown up that much since then!” 

“Geez, thanks!” he gasped, a laugh in his words. 

Rolling her eyes, she regarded him with a raised eyebrow.

“You know what I mean.” 

He nodded. “I do. And the answer is still no.” With a few certain steps he approached the closet and deposited the suit into the furthest, darkest corner.

Eyes narrowed, she watched him.

“One day,” she swore, wagging a finger at him.

“Never gonna happen,” he replied coolly, brushing his hands free of the whole ridiculous matter as his footsteps carried him out of the room. 

Undeterred, she shouted after him again: “One day!”

“Not on your life, princess!” 

With a huff, she crossed her arms. It will happen. One day she’ll get to see him in a suit. Definitely not that one, and probably not anytime soon, but she’d get him to wear a suit if it killed her.

“And put the rest of my clothes away too!” he demanded from somewhere downstairs and the huntress winced, looking at the scattering of discarded shirts and sweaters surrounding her. 

* * *

When she had said she’d get him to wear a suit if it killed her, she didn’t mean like this. She had meant out for a nice dinner - something not cooked, or broiled, or fried, or that had definitely spent most of its life in the back of a frozen truck - or maybe just in the confides of Fenton Works, where only she would be privy to his dashing….

Dashing….

Dashing- _ness_ , Tazaki decided with a lot more of struggle than it should have taken. She was usually so eloquent, able to speak a dozen languages and had a real knack for stringing words together until they sounded  _just_ right.

But, that’s what a bullet wound will do. Screw up the mental word processing unit real good. And also cause internal bleeding, sure - and external, definitely - but having the word thing not working was a real inconvenience.

In a bleary-eyed haze, she realized just how well Danny’s tie matched his eyes. It was astonishing, really, how someone somewhere had managed to find the perfect blue, and how that blue had found its way onto a tie, which, in turn, had found its way to Maddie Fenton’s shopping cart. Sometimes the world was just  _awesome_.

“Taz! Taz, can you hear me?” Danny asked and it took a couple slow blinks for his face to come into focus. There were those blue eyes again, looking down at her with horrible concern. “Stay with me! Don’t close your eyes, okay? Just keep them open! Keep looking at me.”

But, despite her best efforts, her gaze wandered past him, to the sparkling chandelier overhead. Moments ago, she had been complaining about that chandelier, how it glittered and shone and… she was convinced. The confounded things were cursed. 

After all, this evening had been going just fine until, suddenly, it wasn’t. It had started as a simple detail mission. Trigger had thought he smelled a werewolf in City Hall, so she and a couple other hunters, experts, and the like had staked out the place, slipping into the mayor’s annual charity dinner. They were just about to get to the third course when suddenly  _bullets_. 

Apparently they weren’t the only ones who wanted the chief adviser’s head on a platter - she just would have very much appreciated it if the  _angry guns with guns_ had at least  _asked permission_  before they started shooting up their target, shouting some anti-establishment, save the gorillas dribble she didn’t give two hoots about.

She had counted four dead - two officials and two civilians - and many more injured before suddenly breathing was a considerable chore and the shoulder strap of her dress turned a different shade of red. Then Danny had finally found the decency to show up.

“Y’re l’te,” she slurred sleepily, head rolling side to side as noises and pain wow she didn’t have that much to drink! “N’ce suit though…”

“Uh, thanks,” Danny replied, flinching as another wave of bullets sounded from somewhere in the war zone of the giant dinner hall. “ _Crap_ …” he muttered quietly and even in her barely conscious, definitely delirious state she could see the terror in his eyes. 

It broke her heart. She wanted nothing more than the reach out to him and shield him from this violent life - to take a gun and fire back at the people who dare terrorize the boy who’s parents had daily threatened to dissect him but had looked them in the eye every day at breakfast anyway. 

She wanted to, but her arms were unresponsive. They were still there, somewhere, but unreachable past the agony under her skin and muscles on fire just under her neck. 

Suddenly, another body slammed down next to theirs, bringing a second overturned table in his wake, covering them on two sides. 

“Taz–oh  _no_ ,” he gasped and she recognized him as Trigger, the jerk who’s idea this whole thing was from the beginning. Just as soon as she was finished with dispatching the goons who were horrifying her ghost boy, she was going to give that crazy coot a good one-two  _bam! Right in the kisser._  

“Back off!” Danny snarled instinctively, eyes aflame with hostile green energy. From her position, and general incoherence, the red huntress couldn’t tell if those were fangs in his mouth or just the lighting. 

“Whoa whoa! Hold up, kid!” Trigger exclaimed, hands raised and backing away slightly. 

Tazaki would’ve laughed if she could take at least one breath without nearly drowning in her own blood. 

“I’m a friend! I work with Tazaki,” Trigger continued, and Danny flinched again as someone started screaming in agony somewhere behind him. His eyes lit up an entirely different green, shoulders rigid and spine bent like a feral cat. 

Trigger frowned at him. “Are… are you a civilian?” 

“Somebody’s…” Danny winced as the screaming turned to pained wails. His pulse quickened, head spinning in horror. 

“Hey, hey, kid, listen to me, okay? Not them!” 

“They need–they’re…” The cries turned to a throaty gurgling sound and Taz closed her eyes reverently. It was too late. 

“Don’t think about them!” Trigger was insisting, grabbing Danny’s shoulders hard between his hands. “Think about me! Listen to what I’m saying to you!” 

Suddenly, Danny looked up, eyes alit with crystal blue clarity. 

“They’re dying aren’t they?” 

Trigger took a moment to mourn, and Tazaki could only lay there, fuming over what was happening and that there was nothing she could do to stop it.

“Yes,” the other hunter answered quietly, and Danny broke. His body started to slump with gravity, heavier than even a normal human body should ever be. And Taz wanted to scream or cry or break something because he was too young to feel the things he was. He was a boy - not a soldier like they were - still just a young child, innocent to the ways of the world. 

“Come on, kid. There was nothing you could’ve done,” Trigger said and immediately Tazaki wished for nothing else than a single bullet and the ability to aim long enough to shoot him in the face because that was no ordinary civilian he was talking to. That was a genuine, bonafide hero. The real deal. A young genius. A prodigy. A good friend. That was a boy who had done more in his lifetime than stupid Trigger had done in twice as long. 

That was Danny Phantom. 

“Dun… Dunny Pha…” she slurred, and Danny was immediately by her side, blue eyes put back together long enough to focus on her. 

Trigger blinked. “Huh? What?” he asked, scooting close, dragging his supply bag with him. It scraped against the broken glass on the floor as someone somewhere started sobbing. “Speak up, Tazaki.” 

Feebly, she slapped Danny with one hand, finger pointed to his chest. 

“…Dunny Phans…” 

Danny clasped her too cold hand in his own. 

“I’m right here, Tazzy. You… I’m right here.” 

Miraculously, something switched on in Trigger’s stupid brain and he looked at Danny, curious and stupefied. 

“What did you just call her?” 

The ghost boy blinked at him. 

“Tazzy?” 

Excitement growing, Trigger shifted so he was facing the boy, hands out as if he was about to explain ABCs. 

“And what’d you say your name was?”

Danny regarded him with a look of suspicion, which Taz could understand. She would even have encouraged it another day, but from what she remembered before everything went wrong, Trigger was the only one on the ground with her so he was likely their only option of getting out of this place alive. 

Which meant they were all as good as dead. 

“I didn’t,” Danny tested. He really wasn’t sure how he should feel about where this conversation was going. 

The red huntress at his knees tried to squeeze his hand reassuringly. 

“I…eh, I know that. But what it is?” 

“…Danny?” 

Trigger gestured for him to continue. “Danny what?” 

Taz rolled her eyes - or at least tried to. 

“Phun…” 

“Phantom?” Trigger guessed and wow remind her to be on his team next time they played charades. “ _You’re_ Danny Phantom?!” Trigger exclaimed. “Oh my–  _that’s_ Danny Phantom! He’s  _Danny Phantom_!” 

Danny slowly inched away. 

“This… this is great! This is…  _fantastic_!” 

Tazaki suddenly coughed, too much blood splashing out of her mouth and onto Danny’s black pants. 

“Sh’t uph,” she wheezed, and Trigger very nearly slapped himself. Too bad he didn’t. 

“Oh crap! Oh  _crap_! Right! Right! Uh…” he looked at Danny. “Where was she hit?” 

“The neck. Around the sterno muscle, above the clavicle. Think it missed the jugular, though,” the boy replied before he could even stop and consider what a stupid question that was. 

“Missed the juggler? Guess we’ll have to go for his balls then,” Trigger tried and Taz wished she could drop dead right then and there. Whatever was waiting for her on the other side had to be an improvement of Trigger’s stupid attempts at lightening the mood. 

“No?” he asked, then cleared his throat. “Okay. Um, next order of business,  _uh_ , did the bullet come  _out_?” 

Danny froze and tried very, very hard not to panic. It proved difficult, however, to focus on more than one thing at a time as people around him were falling and his best friend was bleeding out before him. He thought back and remembered a noise - the first gunshot - followed by an eerily long moment of silence as people comprehended what was happening. Most didn’t even hear it, and it took a few more to get everyone’s attention. Danny could see it all from above, where he had just phased through the ceiling. The maniac with the gun shouted something - his speech took a long time, which Danny had thought was weird and had stuck out to him for some reason - but amid the shock he had seen movement. Red on red, and he had known it was Tazaki and suddenly everything went crazy. He had seen chaos and bodies, and he raced to her as quickly as he could have, but the bullet had gotten to her before he could have. 

Oh  _no_. There was a bullet. A real, metal bullet, lodged in the neck of his friend. She could  _die_ from this. She  _was_ dying. 

“No, I don’t think so,” he finally replied because he didn’t panic when he woke up after the accident and sank into the floor and he wasn’t about to start panicking now. 

“Which means…” Trigger prompted.

“The bullet is still… in her.” 

“Right. So, that leads us to can you–” 

Danny didn’t even wait for the other hunter to finish, because whatever he was going to say, wasn’t happening. Not on his watch. Instead, he planted his hands firmly on Tazaki’s body - tried not to be distracted by how cold it was - and thought  _metal_.

* * *

Taz had zoned out as some point. Not that she could blame herself. Trigger was being his stupid self, someone somewhere else was dying, and she was so tired. But she was not going to pass out. She knew better than that. But, even in her delirious state where the world seemed to move backwards and voices sounded off pitch, she still had the presence of mind to rest her eyes for a minute. 

Or, so she thought. 

Next thing she knew, she was falling. Except she was wasn’t moving, except she was completely weightless, except she wasn’t touching anything and  _oh no is this what dying felt like?_  Being stuck in a void - unable to interact with anything, even the air? For the briefest moments she didn’t exist and it was so surreal and wrong - everything screamed at her how wrong it was - that she flailed in blind panic. This couldn’t be happening! Not to her! Not like this! She did exist, she knew it! She had memories and emotions and a life - something beyond this underwater weightlessness. 

Wait. 

Underwater. 

That rung loudly in her head and her hysterical mind clung to it, because even water - even the memory of water - existed. It had weight and form and it touched every part of her body, every pore, even when she was floating on its surface. It drenched clothes and ruined hair and somehow seemed stupidly familiar to her. But she couldn’t place it. And she was tired again. 

In the corner of her mind, the corner exactly opposite the hysteric and contemplative ones, she felt something stir. A little knock, barely distinguishable from the blood pounding in her ears, but it was there. And it brought company. 

She turned and the sight that met her eyes undid a lifetime of pain in a single instance. She screamed.

* * *

A single bullet  _clink_ ed to the tile floor and Danny immediately lifted the intangibility he had placed on Taz, slowly and gently laying her back down. Hopefully she would forgive him for that one day, but the bullet was out and she would live. So that was something he  _could_ live with, even if she never spoke to him again. 

Grimacing, he flicked the thing away, not even giving it a second thought as it skittered off to who-knows-where. 

He leaned forward, staring and the red huntress’ pale face. 

“She looks really bad,” he said, and turned his eyes to Trigger, demanding he come up with the next step of keeping her alive. 

“Yeah, but she’ll be okay now that that’s out,” the hunter sighed and Danny half wanted to blast him for relaxing on the job and cry because she would be okay. “Still gotta stop the bleeding though. Doubt you’ve got a handy little trick for that, huh?” 

Like the bullet, Danny didn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he ripped his jacket off and balled it together. She moaned and grimaced when he pressed it to her shoulder, and he had to remind himself he couldn’t ask for forgiveness if she was dead. 

“It’s alright. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. But I gotta, okay? You’re gonna… I have to, okay? I’m sorry,” he said and didn’t even realize he was sobbing until the third tear ran down his face. 

“I’m sorry,” he continued, pleading with her to hang in there, please, just for him. Just a little bit longer. 

“I’m sorry!” 

Behind him, Trigger looked up, hunter senses alert, and whooped loudly as backup burst through the doors, making efficient work of the crazed gunmen. 

“Oh,  _finally_!” he shouted, climbing out of their little safe area. “What took you all?”

“What happened?” the leader asked, lowering his gun. As Trigger started explaining why he  _wasn’t_ crazy and the chief adviser  _totally was_  a werewolf, the largest man in the group recognized the sounds of a particular thorn in his side sobbing and holstered his rifle, breaking from the group. 

“Danny?” he asked, yanking the heavy mahogany table away. 

The ghost boy snarled at the noise, scrambling away in an hysterical panic, eyes burning in green flames. In the half instant it took him to realize he had left his charge unattended, Asha recognized that red hair and about collapsed on the spot. 

“Tazaki…! Injured over here! Hunter down!” he shouted to the rest of the group, who rushed toward him. 

Danny scrambled back to Taz’s body, hands shaking and suit stained in red as he pressed his palms into his ruined jacket. 

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he was choking, arms pulsing as if he was giving the huntress’ shoulder CPR.

Slowly, Asha lowered himself down, waving the other hunters off for a moment. 

“Danny! Danny, it’s me. It’s Asha. I’m here.”

“I’m sorry!”

“Danny, I’m going to take over, okay? You have to get off Tazaki, alright?” 

“I’m sorry!” 

“Danny, you have to stop. You’re hurting her.” 

The ghost boy reared back as if he had been burned. Instantly, Asha took over the hold, squeezing his palm into the huntress’ shoulder hard enough for her to groan in displeasure. 

“There you go, Red. It’s okay now,” he cooed. Looking up, he whistled the other hunters over, who got to work bandaging her up and checking her vitals. 

Letting go, Asha turned to Danny. The boy had backed himself against the other overturned table, staring somewhere between Taz’s lifeless body and another dimension altogether. 

He stared quietly, as the other hunters looked her over, and stared as they lifted her onto a portable stretcher. 

“Danny?” Asha prompted quietly, lowering himself in front of the comatose child. He knew they both wanted to go with her, but the ghost boy was in no state to get there on his own. 

“She wanted to see me in a suit,” Danny said. “Said she’d do it, one day.” 

Silently, Asha reached for the boy, who leaned into him like a lifeline. Any other day, the large man would’ve laughed at the very idea of carrying the ghost boy around. The child had peeved him off more times than Asha could count and was a long way from any sort of comradery from the older hunter. 

Of course, any other day Tazaki wouldn’t be flat lining and being carried out of city hall on a stretcher. 

Any other day, but not today. 

So he carried Danny, supporting him just the way he needed. Today, they had both almost lost their best friend. Today, he could be there to comfort and coddle a scared boy as they left behind a puddle of blood and one ruined perfect blue tie. 


End file.
